The present invention relates to a recording apparatus, a recording/reproducing apparatus and a recording medium capable of recording video-signal data and audio-signal data into a recording medium of a predetermined type, being well applicable to equipment such as a video camera.
At the present time, a video camera of a portable type, wherein an image shooting apparatus such as a camera and a video deck capable of recording and playing back video and audio data are integrated into a single body, is becoming widely popular.
In general, such a video camera employs a removable recording medium represented mainly by a videotape cassette. Normally, when the storage area of a recording medium mounted on the main body of such a video camera is almost all used up in the course of recording carried out by the user by utilizing the video camera, the recording is suspended temporarily, the recording medium mounted on the video camera is taken out, a new recording medium prepared in advance is mounted in place of the removed recording medium and the recording is resumed.
By the way, for example, during a period of time to replace a recording medium mounted on the video camera with another one in the course of the image shooting as described above, data can not be recorded into the recording medium. That is to say, when recording is carried out over a long period of time using a plurality of recording media, information that would be recorded into a recording medium during a period of time to replace the recording medium mounted on the video camera with another one is lost. As a result, continuity of recorded data along the time axis between 2 recording media can not be obtained in a strict sense.
Particularly, in recent years, promotion of efforts to increase the recording density of the disc recording medium is under way. With such promotion serving as a background, a video deck capable of recording and playing back video and audio data can be possibly employed in a video camera for a disc recording medium. If a disc recording medium is employed as a recording medium, operations such as random accesses can be carried out, so that, during playback processing for example, operations such as a scan, forward and rewind can be implemented at a higher speed.
In the present state of the art, however, a disc recording medium generally has a small storage capacity in comparison with a tape recording medium as before. In the case of a video camera in particular, the amount of video data of a moving picture is extremely large in comparison with information to be recorded such as audio data. Thus, in a video camera system employing a disc as a recording medium, the recording time per disc is expected to be relatively short. As a result, there are raised problems that, in the course of recording over a long period of time, the disc recording medium must be replaced more frequently and a ratio of time of losing data caused by replacement of the disc recording medium to the total recording time increases accordingly.
In addition, as is generally known, a recording/playback apparatus for driving a disc recording medium is generally more sensitive to vibration and shocks than a driver for driving a tape recording medium.
For this reason, when a variety of servo of a driver employed in a video camera for driving a disc used in the camera as a recording medium is out of control due to a cause such as vibration of the main body of the camera or a shock given to the main body during a recording operation using the camera for example, recording of data is interrupted. In such a circumstance, it is more certainly within the bounds of probability that continuity of recorded data along the time axis can not be obtained any more.